by Mark Timlin
‘Fine,’ replied Bell, and after the guard had gone through the door back to the foyer, he said to me with a look at Nancy that was usually reserved for shit on the bottom of your best brogues, ‘What’s the whore doing here?’
‘Nice mouth you have there,’ I replied. ‘Just leave it. She’s got a right to be here.’
‘I don’t want her around.’
‘You’ve got no choice. I say what’s happening, not you.’
‘You fucker,’ said Jackson.
I gave him a similar look to the one Bell had given Nancy. ‘Yeah, Graham, you’ve said that before for all the good it did you. What’s happening here exactly?’
‘There’s a bloke going to work the crane,’ Bell said. ‘Our stuff’s on top of that pile over there.’ He pointed with his right hand in no particular direction.
‘Then?’
‘Then we open it up, go inside out of the way, and you get what you came for.’
‘Cheers,’ I said, and suddenly all sorts of pulleys and chains burst into life above me. I looked around and saw a glass-fronted control room I hadn’t noticed before in one corner of the warehouse. Behind the glass sat a guy in a light blue shirt who manoeuvred one of the large containers off the top of its pile and set it down neatly on the concrete floor a dozen yards from where we were standing.
‘That’s it?’ I asked as the geezer came out of the control room and clambered down a metal ladder attached to the wall.
‘That’s it,’ said Bell, who nodded at the guy as he walked past us, then produced a gold-coloured mortise key from his pocket. Jackson took a similar one from his.
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Who would’ve believed all that money was right here all the time?’
‘Want to take a look?’ said Bell with a shit-eating grin.
Come into my parlour, I thought, as I nodded my head and we walked together over to the container, and I wondered if Lambretta and his people had got lost on the way.
Graham Jackson joined us at the door of the container, inserted his key into one of the two locks and twisted it. Philip Bell did the same to the other, pulled down on the iron bar that secured the door and swung it open on its creaking hinges.
Bell reached inside and switched on what must have been a battery-powered light that sat in the ceiling behind a mesh screen. The bulb was dim, but bright enough to see that the interior of the container was waist deep in grey canvas bags marked with the 4F Security logo and all fastened at the necks with wire. ‘Eldorado,’ said Bell.
All three of us stepped inside the door and I picked up one of the bags. It was heavy and rustled with paper inside. Wodges of paper. Cash.
‘How much in each bag?’ I asked.
‘Depends,’ said Bell. ‘This is dead money, don’t forget.’
‘It’s about to come to life,’ I replied. ‘Or at least some of it is. We’ll put what we need into your car and transfer it to ours somewhere quiet.’
‘I want my sodding brief back,’ said Graham Jackson.
‘Don’t worry, son,’ I said. ‘As soon as we’ve got our dough you’ll get it.’
We stepped back out into the warehouse and Nancy was waiting with a gun in her hand. A big gun. A Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum Combat model that looked even bigger in her tiny hands. ‘Harry’s,’ she said by way of explanation. She must have had it in the huge bag she’d been carrying all day. And I didn’t look. What a schmuck. ‘And I know how to use it. He taught me. So don’t get any big ideas about the little woman being afraid of muzzle flash.’
‘Stand and deliver,’ I said. ‘Nancy. What the fuck are you playing at?’
‘Not playing,’ she replied. ‘Being deadly serious.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Nancy, you’re going to spoil everything,’ I said almost pleadingly. You’d’ve pleaded too if you’d been looking down into the big black hole that was the muzzle of the gun.
‘Shut up, Nick,’ she said. ‘And get the guns you’re carrying out and on to the floor.’
I did as she told me, placing the Colt and the Browning carefully on the ground in front of me.
‘You armed, boys?’ she said to Jackson and Bell.
’Course they’re armed, I thought. How naïve.
‘Find out,’ said Bell.
Nancy cocked the S&W and moved the barrel up and down his torso. ‘I don’t need to find out, lover,’ she said. ‘I just shoot your balls off. I know what means the most to you.’
Just like I’d done to Graham Jackson at his flat. Funny how all coppers were so fond of their bollocks. It must go with the job.
‘OK, OK,’ said Bell. ‘Graham. Come on.’
They both reached under their jackets. ‘Slowly,’ said Nancy. ‘No tricks.’
‘Was this your idea?’ said Bell to me after his and Jackson’s police issue short-barrelled Webley .38 revolvers were on the floor too.
‘Are you kidding?’ I said back. ‘Does it look like my soddin’ idea? All I want is a quiet life.’
And on cue, the huge metal doors to the warehouse began to roll up into the ceiling.
‘What the fuck?’ said Bell, turning towards the doors, and all our eyes followed his. Slowly and relentlessly the doors rolled up on their pulleys, and the gatehouse guard was shoved forward and sprawled on the floor in front of us. Behind his prone figure, silhouetted against the lights that shone up against the building outside were half a dozen figures all armed with an assortment of semi-automatic pistols and shotguns. And behind them, its engine running, stood a huge tractor truck with an empty low-loader attached. All the better to carry away the container of cash, I thought.
By sheer reflex Nancy fired the magnum she was holding and the bullet shot sparks off the ground and ricocheted against the metal-clad walls. The figures outside dropped to the ground and returned fire and I felt a tug at my left sleeve and my arm went numb. That was when I took my chance, ducked, snatched up the Browning with thirteen full metal brass-jacketed shells nestling in its magazine like little babies waiting to be born and rip the meat from the bones of anyone who got in their way, and fled into the maze of stacked containers behind me.
As I ran I saw Bell’s thigh explode in a geyser of blood and flesh and he went down on one knee. Jackson grabbed one of the pistols the two policemen had dropped and headed towards the open door of the container and Nancy darted through the door that led into the offices.
As I vanished into the alley I snapped off one quick shot in the direction of Lambretta’s men, and was heartened to hear a scream as the lucky shot went home.
I hoped that my good luck held.
Bullets and shotgun pellets were spanging off the metal behind me as I skidded to a halt in the shadows beyond the reach of the ceiling lights and out of the line of fire. I checked my arm. The bullet had gone straight through the muscle at the top and out the other side. It was bleeding, but not too badly, but I still needed to clot the blood. Quickly I put down my gun, shucked off my jacket, ripped the tail of my shirt off and bound the length of material round my bicep, knotting it with my right hand and my teeth. It wasn’t perfect and it was starting to hurt by then, but it would have to do.
By the time I’d tugged on my battered leather jacket again, now accessorised by two holes in the sleeve, one a neat roundel, the other ragged and bloodstained, the firing had all but stopped. I looked down the alley in the direction I was heading. It was a dead end. I couldn’t go forward and I couldn’t go back. I looked round desperately, then my eyes roved towards the roof and I saw that the ladder that ran up the side of each container almost touched the one above, forming one long ladder to the top of the stack, and I decided that the only way was up.
I stuck the Browning into the waistband of my blue jeans, and using mostly my right arm, and favouring my left which was beginning to give me serious gyp, I started to climb the ladders. It was a bastard trying to drag myself up one-handed and when I reached the top I lay gasping for breath on the dusty roof of the top container.
After a moment I scuttled across and peered down at the floor of the warehouse.
The guard was lying rolled up into a ball where he’d fallen, Lambretta’s men were spread out behind cover, except for one who lay still just outside the door. My shot had been a good one, but probably wouldn’t put me into Lambretta’s top ten. Not that I was going to lose a lot of sleep over that. Bell was lying on this side of the money container with his back against it and even from a distance it was obvious that he was losing a lot of blood from his leg wound. There was no sign of Jackson and Nancy, until Jackson stuck one hand out from behind the door of the container itself and fired.
Lambretta’s men returned fire and Jackson’s hand vanished.
Then the door to the inner foyer of the offices opened and the guard who’d let us into the building, another uniformed man I hadn’t seen before, the guy in the blue shirt who’d operated the crane, and Nancy were shoved through. Nancy had lost her gun and from the look of her face had got a good clout for her pains.
Behind the four came Lambretta and John Duncan, his minder from Romford who belonged to the gun I was holding and who I’d kicked in the bollocks back at Lambretta’s gaff. They were both both carrying automatics.
Shit, I thought. Why can’t anything I do ever go right?
‘Stop firing,’ Tony Lambretta ordered, and a hush fell over the warehouse as his men obeyed, and I wondered where the hell Crazy Larry and his troops were, and how long we had before the law arrived to find out who was shooting the shit out of the outer suburbs.
‘Sharman!’ screamed Lambretta. ‘Where the hell are you? Come out where I can see you, or I shoot the bitch in the back of the head.’
Much as I disliked Nancy I couldn’t let that happen. Not right then. She had some information I needed to know, and she had to be alive to tell me.
I drew a bead on Lambretta’s chest with the Browning and almost squeezed the trigger. But knowing how good a shot I am, there was more chance I’d blow the head off one of the hostages if I fired, so I put up the gun and shouted, ‘Up here.’
All heads moved in my direction.
‘Come down,’ ordered Lambretta. ‘And you, in the box. Throw out your gun and come out.’
‘You can shoot her for all I care,’ shouted Jackson.
‘It ain’t her I’m going to shoot if you don’t come out,’ said Lambretta. ‘It’s your pal, the other copper, and then you.’
There was a pause and then Jackson’s gun came through the door and clattered to the floor and he came out with his hands up.
Lambretta’s men got to their feet, and one of them tugged Philip Bell up off the floor and supported him as he dragged his injured leg across the floor to where Lambretta and Duncan were standing with their prisoners.
‘Now you, Sharman,’ said Lambretta. ‘Throw your gun well clear. I don’t want it going off by accident.’
Of course I could always have unloaded it, but an unloaded gun is no good to anyone, so I threw it right across the warehouse where it bounced across a pile of cardboard boxes, hit the wall, spun off and skidded across the floor.
‘Now come down,’ ordered Lambretta.
I did as I was told, favouring my left arm again on the ladders during my descent, and was met by one of Lambretta’s boys when I reached the ground, who grabbed my injured arm so hard I almost passed out and then pushed me back to centre stage.
‘So,’ said Lambretta when we were all together, bloody but unbowed. At least I was. I couldn’t speak for Nancy, Bell and Jackson. But then I had one final desperate ace up my sleeve, even if one of my sleeves had two bullet holes in it. ‘Here we are at last. Johnny – check that container.’
Duncan gave me an extremely dirty look and went and did as he was told. He went into the container and came out a second or two later with a canvas bag in each hand. ‘Looks like it, boss,’ he said to Lambretta.
‘Good,’ said Lambretta with a thin smile. ‘Terry, bring in the truck.’
One of his men nodded, put his gun away, and headed towards the artic and low-loader.
‘So what’s the deal?’ I said to Lambretta.
‘No deal. We take the cash and get out of here before the police arrive.’
‘Nice plan,’ I said. ‘But I thought we were going to do a split.’
‘We were. But I changed my mind. And you’ve killed one of my blokes.’
‘Lucky shot,’ I said.
‘Not for him.’
‘They were shooting at us.’
‘Pity they aren’t better shots. Why’d you start shooting, anyway?’
‘It was her,’ I said, nodding my head in the direction of Nancy. ‘She got greedy and pulled a gun. When your blokes showed up she got the shakes and popped one off.’
‘Bad mistake,’ snarled Lambretta.
‘So what happens to us?’ I asked. ‘You can’t just kill us all.’
‘Can’t I?’ said Lambretta.
‘There’s two serving coppers here. Don’t you think someone might get a bit inquisitive if we all vanish and then turn up in little bits all over London?’
‘That won’t happen again,’ said Lambretta. ‘If you lot disappear, you disappear for good.’
‘Says you,’ I said. ‘You didn’t do a very good job with Harry Stonehouse.’
‘You can’t—’ interjected Nancy suddenly. ‘You can’t do this.’
‘No?’ said Lambretta as the truck reversed through one of the main doors. ‘Try me.’
‘You can’t. You promised.’
‘Boss,’ said Duncan. ‘We’d better get a move on.’
‘Well, get the sodding thing loaded, then.’ He turned to the bloke from Firmin’s in the light blue shirt. ‘You get up in the control room and get that container on our loader.’ He turned to another of his men, a big geezer in a MA1 jacket. ‘You go with him, Tommy. Make sure he does it right first time.’ The big guy nodded and pushed the geezer in the blue shirt towards the ladder that led to the control room.
‘You promised her what?’ I said to Lambretta, picking up on what Nancy had said to him.
‘He promised me a share.’ Nancy’s face was white and she was trembling.
‘When you sold Harry out to him, you mean?’ I said. ‘Don’t think I didn’t know.’
‘No,’ said Nancy.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You must take me for a bigger mug than I thought, if you didn’t think I’d worked that one out for myself. Did you think he’d blown you out? Is that why you got me involved?’
‘I didn’t know what he’d done. But I knew the money still had to be somewhere. How did you know it was me sold Harry?’ she asked.
‘When I went to Lambretta’s place he called you “that bitch”. So I knew he must know you.’
‘Harry wouldn’t tell me where the money was,’ she said pleadingly. ‘I didn’t mean for him to be killed.’
‘Bollocks, Nancy,’ I said. ‘You didn’t give a damn. I bet the only reason you stayed with him was because of this money.’
‘He promised me,’ she wailed.
‘Everyone promises, Nancy,’ I said. ‘And everyone breaks their promise. But I promise you this, duck. Harry was my mate even though I fucked him over myself. And you were right. I do owe him, and I’ll make sure you go down for what you did to him.’
‘No chance,’ said Lambretta. ‘Where you’re going to no one will ever hear from you again.’
‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ I said. Because above the rumble of the truck’s diesel I heard another sound. The sound of motor-cycle engines coming down the Purley Way at high speed.
Lambretta heard it too and frowned. ‘Company,’ I said. ‘Better get the kettle on.’
Everyone in the warehouse looked at one another in puzzlement as the sound of the engines got louder outside and headlights crisscrossed the service road that ran up towards the front of the warehouse.
‘What the fuck?’ said Duncan, nervously raising his gun as the bikers skidded to a halt outside, Crazy L
arry in the lead on a chopped ’47 Knucklehead Harley-Davidson. He sat at the head of the phalanx of Street Shit revving up his engine through the chrome dragpipes that adorned the back of the machine, and I saw that, instead of a false hand on the end of his left arm, he now sported a silver hook that was clamped tight on to the clutch of the bike. With his right hand he drew a revolver from inside his jacket and cocked the hammer with his thumb.
‘It’s those bikers,’ said Lambretta. ‘Where the fuck did they come from? It’s OK, I’ll deal with them. Don’t shoot.’
That wasn’t part of the plan. The last thing I wanted was for the bad guys to get all matey and for Crazy Larry and his pals to give the truck a motor-cycle escort back to east London.
I took my chance in the confusion that the gang’s arrival and Lambretta’s announcement provoked. One of his men had picked up all the abandoned guns and stuck them on top of a packing case, but he was paying more attention to what was going on outside than to keeping an eye on them, and with two strides I was next to him, picked up the Browning, cracked him round the back of the neck with the barrel and fired three shots into the pack of leather-clad riders who were blocking anyone’s exit from the warehouse.
That was when all hell broke loose.
At least one of the wild shots hit a soft target and one biker toppled off his steed and lay writhing on the tarmac, as I grabbed one of the police Webleys, stuffed it into my pocket, ducked down behind the packing case for cover and started firing at any target I could see.
The bikers returned fire, their first volley chopping Bell to the ground and cutting another of Lambretta’s men off at the knees. Nancy was left standing as all around her dived for cover. ‘Nancy!’ I screamed. ‘Get over here.’
She looked at me in a panicked way, stepped back, then changed her mind and walked forward, straight into a round from someone’s gun. It hit her on one side of her head, blowing a hole the size of a baking potato out of the other, and spraying hair, bone, blood and brains against the container closest to her. Her legs buckled and she fell face forward.
